


This Shouldn't Be Happening

by macherrycherie



Series: I Can't Stop Thinking About You [1]
Category: Marvel's Avengers - RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Smut at one point, be careful, before you ask yes the reader's backstory/history is something out of my own life, i'd kinda prefer not to talk about it tho!, im?????, lottie's a bitch, not even that big of a deal tbh, this is kinda just a way to help me cope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 08:04:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14540355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macherrycherie/pseuds/macherrycherie
Summary: Your life was going perfectly as soon as you'd gotten out of high school! Great job, great apartment, great boyfriend - then you see Tom again.Oh no.





	This Shouldn't Be Happening

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Mentions of abuse inside of a friendship!

   It had been a long time since you’d spoken to him. Years, in fact. What were you even supposed to say?

   Tom Holland was one of your closest friends once. He had played a major role in your life for a little while, someone you could confide in and have fun with.  
  
   You started off your life not knowing he existed. You were both in the same elementary school classes, walking among your friends without having a clue about the little boy acting confident to gain your attention (not that it ever worked; you were very oblivious). In middle school, you ended up in different classes, and although he saw less of you, he held the same feelings about you. No matter how far you were from each other, he always managed to catch your eye in the halls, but the moment was fleeting – you would soon return to scanning the hallway, and he was left staring at your face.

   At the time, you weren’t even thinking about him. You two had one conversation once about a mutual friend, and that was it. You were now busy with your full-time job as a doormat for the said mutual friend, Lottie Alger. She was, to put it lightly, a total snob. Lottie was the type of girl who attracted others to her with her ‘F*** you, this is my life if you don’t like it, leave,’ attitude.

   You and Lottie had met in fifth grade when you moved to London. You were a bubbly, awkward kid who just liked to be friends with people, but had a tendency to get clingy and protective over certain close friends of yours. Lottie was stuck-up, snotty, and liked to get her way, and already had a best friend, a girl named Gracie who eventually left Lottie for you. Lottie immediately resented you – she saw you as a threat. She watched you carefully and figured out that you were someone who liked to praise others, liked to be a support system. When Gracie dropped you as well, Lottie swooped in and took advantage of you. She pretended to take you under her wing, but in reality, she used you.

   It went on like this for years. Whenever Lottie felt threatened, you came in and inflated her ego. She was very secretive about how she used you, but you always knew something was off. You wanted to be Lottie’s confidante, her second-in-command, but it seemed like there was always someone who was one step ahead of you, who Lottie trusted more, who was better than you in every way.    

   That said, Lottie was not the most aesthetically pleasing young lady. You had always been much better looking than her, no matter what she tried. So instead of trying to be better than you herself, she took the easier route and became best friends with people who you thought were better than you. It didn’t matter what they were better at – being pretty, having a lot of money, or having a lot of friends – Lottie just wanted to keep you in a corner.

   Enter the last year of middle school, and your parents are warning you more and more about Lottie’s behavior. She’d recently become close friends with a girl named Becca, whose parents were rich but on the edge of divorce, and who was extremely kind to you. When you finally became tired of constantly being the #2 friend, you realized you had nowhere else to turn. You’d spent so much time trying to earn Lottie’s friendship that you had entirely neglected to make other friends.

   So you didn’t try to make new ones. You pretended to still be Lottie’s friend but stopped trying altogether. You never made plans that she would eventually cancel, never asked her how her day was, never asked to hang out. Settled for being a surface friend.

   Middle of that year, you were walking out of a class by yourself and spotted a guy named Harrison who you knew well enough to have a conversation with. By Harrison’s side is Tom, who smiles when he sees you and introduces himself. “I’m Tom,” he says, and that’s it. You’re stunned. His accent sounds completely unique to you, even though it’s the same as everyone else’s, and his eyes have captivated you. You know you’ve seen him before, but it’s not enough. You want to be with him all the time, and your heart flutters at the thought.

   Before long, every time you walk out of that class, you meet up with Tom and Harrison. The days when Harrison was absent – which were few – you had the pleasure of walking only with Tom. And yet, no matter what you did, you never became close enough to get his number. You were only surface friends, just like with Lottie.

   At the end of the year, everyone was crying save for you. You were ready to get out and never have to see Lottie again. The thought of it thrilled you, and your smile alone could make a dead man jump from his grave just to ask to see it again. You looked radiant on that day, and when it was time to sign yearbooks, Tom spotted you, and he swore his heart stopped for a moment. He didn’t have the time to compliment you, though, because he was popular (due to his confident, kind personality), and there were people around him asking to sign their book.

   You didn’t have many friends, so you were kind of alone, and you wandered from group to group, getting signatures mostly from people who felt they owed you one out of politeness. When you went back to sit on the bleachers, Tom happened to be getting a break, and you asked to sign his yearbook. He handed over his and took yours, and you signed, “You’re awesome. We should definitely hang out! Love, Y/N L/N. ###-###-####” He signed yours, “It was fun talking to you! HAKAS!” and that was it. You traded yearbooks and you quickly walked away, hoping what you had written wasn’t too much. Your hands were shaking slightly and your face was blushing at the thought of him maybe possibly texting you.

   When you went home that night, you reminded yourself that you barely knew each other and he probably would ignore what you wrote, forgetting you forever. A trait you had ingrained in yourself from the days catering to Lottie’s every need: you were an insignificant speck, and someone spending their time speaking to you was an honor.

   The next morning, you woke up to a text from an unknown number.

   ###: hey y/n! it’s tom

   You blushed again, and your younger sister warmly reminded you to put your phone away or else she’d tell on you.

   You two texted each other all day, every day, for the rest of the summer. You were quick friends, complete opposites. While you presented yourself as loud and fun-loving, on the inside you were quiet and nervous, and self-deprecating. Tom, on the other hand, was confident and outspoken, making sure he never hurt others unless they deserved it. You were the perfect pair, having each other’s backs no matter what.

   One day nearing the end of summer, Tom and you were at your house when the topic of Lottie came up. It hurt you to talk about her, whether in a good or bad way. Your parents constantly reminded you when the topic came up that she had emotionally abused you – but this just made you cry. It didn’t matter what she had done to you because there was still a little part of your heart that told you she was still your friend, that you still wanted to be around her, and it only upset you to say that she abused you.

   Even the word ‘abuse’ made you cry when you thought about it.

   You and Tom were sitting at a table in the basement of your house, and you were in a moment of emotional instability. You were vulnerable, and in this state, you let it slip that she hurt you mentally, and you had problems because of it. Tom, being Tom, nodded and listened to you speak, knowing that it helped, but he harbored feelings for Lottie – she and he had been talking all summer as well, and he knew she wanted to ask him out.

   In the end, you and Tom stopped talking. He told you he was dating Lottie, but he still wanted to be friends with you. This time, you stopped being the fake Y/N for a second, and let yourself be quiet and anxious, and agreed. You two hadn’t spoken since. There were a couple attempts on his part, but you avoided him and Lottie completely. When you ended up in the same Bio Honors class in the first year of high school, you pretended he wasn’t there. When your friends wanted to talk to him, you silently excused yourself, and if someone asked where you were going, you told them you needed to use the restroom.

   It went on like this for the rest of high school. Tom would try and talk to you, but you rejected even the idea of speaking with him. He had betrayed you, in your mind. You had opened up for the first time in a long time, and he responded to it by dating your abuser. He had proven to you that, just like Lottie had shown you years before, opening up to people got you hurt. With that, you stopped being open. You became fake once again, always smiling and happy even though you really weren’t. 

   By your first year of college, you were doing pretty average, and by your junior year, you were a relatively well-off 21 year old, with your own apartment and everything. You had moved back to LA from London, mainly for your job. In fact, you could pay the bills because of your nice job. It was at one of the big six accounting firms, and as a registered CPA you made good money (your certification in Excel helped a little). You were dating a good guy who was very respectable and had a lot of money that he inherited from his parents, and he never forgot your anniversary, always paid when you went out to dinner and had bought you a car for Valentine’s Day.  
   In other words, life couldn’t have been better for you. Your boyfriend’s name was Ben Carlyle, and tonight he had taken you out to a fancy five-star restaurant for dinner, and then to see a movie afterward. Here, we enter our story.

   You and Ben were sitting at a table by the window, so you were able to look out at the stars while you chatted about simple matters of life. You were regulars at this specific place, so you didn’t even have to order; they simply brought you your food.   
  
   Ben smiled at a passing waitress, one who served you two often, and commented, “Tonight seems especially beautiful, doesn’t it?”  
  
   You liked that about him. He seemed to always notice the little things. Very detail-oriented.  
  
   “It does,” you responded. “I wonder why.”  
  
   “Probably because I’m sitting here with you, my beautiful girlfriend, while we watch the stars, not getting interrupted every two seconds.”  
  
   You nodded and grinned. “Probably.”  
  
   Your food was served, and as you ate, Ben’s watch caught your eye. Your mind flitted back to Tom. It was a watch like the one he used to wear, simple but elegant. You remembered that he was an actor now, playing Spiderman. Choking back a gag, you remembered Spiderman’s uncle is named Ben. Gross coincidence.  
  
   What would it have been like if Tom had dated me instead? You asked yourself. I’d still be in London, a mother of three struggling to keep her own, unhappy with her husband.  
  
   A comment from Ben snapped you out of your thoughts. “Y/N? What is it?”  
  
   “Sorry, what were you saying? I zoned out a little.”  
  
   Ben raised an eyebrow. “I was talking about the carbonara. It tastes different this time.”  
  
   You shrugged. “Who knows what it could be?”  
  
   You two continued on in the conversation, paying no mind to the small commotion arising as someone entered the restaurant. You looked up only to see a swarm of paparazzi surrounding a clearly important person (read: a hot superstar). “Who is that?” You mumbled to Ben.  
  
   As he took his next bite, he remarked, “Just another star, I bet. They like these types of places.”  
  
   You just nodded half-heartedly. You were now paying much more attention to the group of people, and as they dispersed, your heart dropped in your chest.  
  
   Tom Holland was waiting to be seated, and as he stood there chatting away with the gorgeous young woman next to him, you made eye contact.


End file.
